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High Winds Cause Blowing Dust, Fallen Trees In Inland NW On Sunday

Screenshot from Washington Department of Transportation

As of Monday, 3/29 at 1:30 pm

Avista:  1,200 customers
Kootenai Electric Cooperative: 220 customers 

Strong winds blew dust through eastern Washington Sunday, causing the closure of Interstate 90 between Ritzville and Moses Lake from Sunday afternoon until about 9:30 pm.

More than 17,000 people had lost power around the region by Sunday night.The National Weather Service forecast wind gusts of 50-65 miles an hour throughout the Columbia Basin and the Palouse.

Those winds blew down trees throughout the region. Several regional utilities reported outages in eastern Washington and north Idaho.

Avista on Sunday evening reported about 90 outages in its service area, affecting nearly 11,000 customers, about 1,000 of them in the Spokane area. Inland Power reported about 2,900 people without electricity. Kootenai Electric Cooperative had about 3,000 customers without power in Kootenai and Bonner counties.